How to go full-time in web3 and what the Helium Foundation does

Transcript

what's up friends welcome to web3 academy a place for entrepreneurs creators and marketers to explore and learn how to use web 3 to transform business models and create thriving communities enjoy this next episode [Music] welcome to web 3 academy it's uh the web3 academy spotlight and we've got an awesome member of the community in here today uh eda act turks that we are putting the spotlight on uh it is a 3 enthusiast previously uh spent some time in the corporate world and uh recently made the transition to full-time web 3. uh and we're here to have her share her story with us today

uh and to dive into some of the specifics of uh building a role in web3 and what that means making that transition uh and participating in uh the communities of web3 and how exciting that is welcome eda thanks thanks so much for having me super excited to be here awesome we're super excited to have you uh so why don't you start by just introducing yourself and telling listeners a little bit about your background yeah for sure so uh my name is edda and i like to describe myself as a web 3 enthusiast i recently transitioned to the space so now i'm working at the

helium foundation on community and developer relations uh just to go a bit back like what i was doing um i have a software engineering background started out as a software engineer and then moved to technical sales so i was in technical sales for the past two and a half years working at cisco in the networking space and then i guess we'll dive into how i fell down the rabbit hole but then most recently i transitioned to web3 so now i'm working on the community and developer relations side it's been uh two and a half months um so yeah super happy to have made it here awesome we're super happy to have you here uh so let's let's start a little

bit about how you got down the rabbit hole uh i guess two sort of questions and you can pick which one you go with first first is what brought you in was there a specific person a friend a tweet uh article that you read and and the other is why did you make the transition and why were you so fascinated by web3 yeah sure so i can start by how i kind of got introduced i think yeah i think it's really more on the speculation side so uh it was april last year when all the cryptocurrencies were just going up uh and i had always stayed away from the space although like it was kind of a

relative like i was more in the computer engineering science field so a lot of people were interested i just always stayed away um but then last year in april all the prices were going up i was there was kovitz so like we were all locked out at home so i finally had like the time um and you know seeing all the prices boom i'm like maybe i should just give this a shot like all my only i didn't really have huge expectations i just thought okay like maybe i should invest a bit i'll go on holidays or something that was my thinking and then i yeah i kind of set up my exchange bought a few cryptocurrency tokens and coins etc and then everything started to go down

so i think i bought it at like the worst possible time when i don't know like ethereum was over 4 000 or something like that um and then i'm like okay this crypto thing isn't working let me try nfts because then everyone was buying nfgs like it was all over the internet and there wasn't like a specific thing i read it's just the cryptocurrency when i started to get into that i heard about nfds and started to be interested you know maybe i'll buy and again go on holidays so for me like um i think this was around may at the time may last year um so i got i i set up you know my own metamask found out about openc um kind of got my first nft

um and that was like the the what do you say like the light bulb format for me um i i found i think there were three things interesting so first of all it was a very easy user experience right we talked i i don't think crypto is an easy user experience but after i got like the initial onboarding stage it was easy to like just approve and have that thing in my wallet um the second thing which was really interesting was that i could see the full transaction and coming from like a very corporate background that's like super unique to have that much transparency um i found that super interesting it was like really the open source world kind of here as well

um and yeah i guess the third thing was like it was mine so i had never like yeah you buy like all these stuff on like sims and club penguin and stuff like that but they're like in-game assets which you don't actually own so this was kind of different and that's when i said okay like let me try and understand a bit more but i wasn't super hooked at that point i was just like okay like this nfc thing is more than something you know just going on holidays but to spend some time to understand so um it was summer time when i was just like really reading lists like listening to podcasts kind of trying to understand what nfts are what all these applications are also the different cryptocurrencies i didn't really know like a lot i i was just always staying

away so yeah i i think that was when i started to discover um like i started to be interesting to understand the technology stack because i was coming from a solution architect like software engineer background as well i was really curious to see how this actually works um so and then i said let me just get a deep dive like try to build something myself and i started following some people on twitter um and i started following nader david who was like uh one of the most uh influential like web 3 developer relations and i saw him start this developer dao and um i was following nader's tutorial like he had super like he was someone

which i was really looking up to um and i saw like he's starting to style and i'm like okay i missed this crypto token thing i missed the nft thing i'm not going to miss this dow thing whatever it is i'm just going to give it a shot um and i hopped on developer dow it was like you just had to pay the gas fee to mint the nft to get in and i followed the instructions it was my first time like minting from etherscan um so i got that got that nft hopped onto the server and this was a server i think it was yeah we're kind of approaching september time so there was like all these developers coming in there like everyone asked me like what is this thing how does this work like how do i even

code something like do you yeah what do you use you know it's just like a different architecture and and then i'm there i see like a lot of developers coming in asking the same questions like myself and then i said okay i want to really start to build something and write about this for my own purpose because i had so many notes and i couldn't really keep track of them so let me just start this you know blog where i write about it i write about what i'm doing didn't really have any expectations just post what i find and yeah so i started like doing that i made myself like 100 days webster challenge because otherwise i wouldn't do it every

day so i started that thing i started to write what i was finding and especially getting like a lot of energy from people coming in developer dao having the same questions as myself seeing all the people like super helpful helping me out answering questions because it was hard to get questions like you didn't really know when to start i think there's a lot more resources right now but when i was starting out it's like okay how do i start what do i do there were only a couple of tutorials out there so i started that blog got more involved and i got met a lot of people people were super helpful which was super different as well right like it's a random person on the internet that i meet and that person is taking like an hour to meet with me to answer my questions

um so that was like really interesting i just yeah like i got in because i saw the prices going up but what really hooked me in like why i still stayed was the community effect um and i was never part of any internet communities before so that was kind of weird to me as well um so i started to write more i started to be more involved just meet people share my experience and um at some point it just made so much sense to switch over because i was super more interested in this space uh than what i was doing outside so yeah that's kind of does that answer the questions anywhere thank you very much and you're not you're not the only one that that comes

in and buys at the at the top i think that's actually very very common for for it's actually exactly what happened to me i i literally bought last year at that exact same time when it was at the top so all right i'm with you great uh before we dive more into the webz3 stuff i just have a quick question so you your developer you were kind of in with with a lot of people who were interested in crypto before you got into it you didn't start until prices got up why didn't you get into it was there like did you have a bad like perception of crypto was there like i don't know someone did something to you or told you something about it that was bad um or is it just you just didn't really care you're not into finance um and then once

prices got up you're like ah i should check this out was there anything in particular um i yeah i think that's a great question because i think that's like one of the main issues i guess with the crypto space is that it just has a really bad narrative i think like this like unless you get in like i i knew about it yeah like there's this thing called bitcoin ethereum but it's just purely on the speculation side unless you kind of get past and try to research more so i was just never interested in like trading doing it was just you know this is internet money used for bad stuff so

yeah it just like it wasn't something which i thought would have like the technology that i saw here or the communities that i saw right interesting yeah i think that's i think that's super common i think a lot of people have that same sort of feeling and then prices go up enough and it's like well whatever i'm going to join in anyway it is what it is yeah like also i think it got like more like not mainstream adoption but it got more people in with like everything going up it's like oh okay like even if i don't believe this like why is everything booming you know it can't purely be speculation so you kind of decide to take a step further um but yeah like it was it was everywhere

like more exchanges kind of popped up lots like uh i'm in turkey so like we had like television advertisements on cryptocurrency exchanges uh so at that point it's like okay like if this is on tv maybe i should try it out right i think the other thing that helps is like nfts dows it brought a whole new like so many new use cases to to the space and so once you're here uh if you don't care about speculation or price go down there's still other things you can do other than price i think that's um that's really interesting can you sort of talk about um so you got involved with uh with the dow is it what's the dow called again um developer now i believe um and are you still a part of that

so i am still part of the dao um i'm not as active as i would like to be to be honest um but yeah i'm still part of the dao try and follow a couple of channels a couple of projects um but yeah i'm there and did that lead you into your full-time position now that you have in web 3 with helium or how did you how did you end up landing that role it had a major effect so like with developer dao i saw like a lot of people coming in i was also sharing my articles there getting feedback kind of talking with a lot of people get making the connections there um and then it yeah like i think a lot of people were interested in the content it kind of got bigger and bigger um and i

kind of got my opportunities from twitter which is very interesting i would never expect that coming from a very corporate side of things um but the dao was super like super effective in terms of me getting there and like being okay like this there's this person who's creating content this is the content like kind of amplifying me and giving feedback i was just kind of taking that in meeting a lot of people and i definitely think it was very effective as well can you can you talk a little bit about i think a lot of people coming into web 3 are very scared of discord and i'm am i correct in assuming that developer dao was in discord

yeah yeah so can you just talk a little bit about what it was like when you first came in to developer dao and clearly you're very good at building community uh naturally yourself uh and maybe developer dao had some mechanisms in place to enable people to meet and build community uh but what you know i think a lot of people come into discord and they're like oh my gosh i'm overwhelmed they don't know how to build a relationship they don't know how to meet people they don't know what to do and then they just leave and they don't they miss out so we'd love to hear a bit about your experience and how you built community yeah sure so i think discord was a very scary place for me in the start as well there's just

i wasn't too many different uh discord groups uh there were too many people like pinging tagging like at everyone's ears and then like i just couldn't keep up with all the different conversations too many channels um so this yeah like i think it took me some time to kind of eliminate like you really can't be everywhere every time um there's just too many things going on right i think that's one of the main like everyone in web 3 gets burned out like it's it's just a lot of things going on at the same time so what worked for me was you know i'm just gonna focus on two three things i'm gonna be in only two three channels so just choose the ones which you like and you have a lot of choices right you

don't have to be like a very technical or very like you can choose whatever area you like there are just too many projects going on but don't try to be in everyone and i think i was trying to be in every single one of them so i was just overwhelmed i wasn't enjoying it a lot and so and then i kind of grouped my you know i grouped the discord channels to what i want what i don't want chose the ones which i want to stay in so that's why i'm kind of only active in like two or three different discords right now it's just not sustainable otherwise like it's just too much going on at the same time already the space is too much so like you're already here trying to unlearn what you learned before and then you hop on to discard and then

there's like everyone saying something different so um i was super scared of discard i didn't want to open it at all but now that i kind of have that sorted out it's way better so um yeah like um it wasn't the best it wasn't like we weren't best friends in the start i find there's a big learning curve discord it's like as soon as you get there like holy this thing is crazy yeah there's just too much you can do there's so much going on and then once you sort of like start to use you're like actually wow this is really powerful you can do so much here if you one declutter which i did the same thing i was in like a million discords when i first joined i was like what am i doing i can't i don't know what's going on i

knew these um yeah there's a bit of learning curve which same with just crypto in general learning curve for that too uh but like you said you got to go down the rabbit hole that's that's the key thing if you don't go down the rabbit hole you can't it's hard to understand or get involved in the space can you talk a little bit about um about what helium is first of all and then uh and then why you were drawn to them or why why you started there yeah and that's a great question because um so let me start by what helium is um i think the best way to describe helium is it is a business model for deploying large wireless networks so the first network of this sort is the network for iot devices it's called the lorawan network so these are like

sensor gps trackers those kind of like small devices you would connect um but this is not also the last network of this sort it's also building a 5g network and the way helium works is it it basically allows individuals to be participants in the telecom industry uh so for example like when we think about the traditional telco model it's you know these large telecom providers they buy the land they go and set up their network towers and provide coverage around the area and for doing that they also have to pay like they are the only people paying for the marketing for the sales for all these operations so it's a very high cost industry to get into as well what helium does is you know let's

actually allow individuals like you and i to get a device which is called the hotspot and this hotspot is basically a combination of a crypto miner slash network cellular tower not necessarily a device you would have at home but it made it very user friendly so like we can get this device uh with this device you know we provide coverage around our area and for doing so we earn rewards uh we earn h t tokens which is helium's native token so it's a very like it's a very different way to look at how you have telecom providers operate like it's an interesting way to set up a network and i was coming i was at the networking

space already so i kind of had an idea of how the networking telecom providers work you know how they kind of how the operations work inside and when i learned about this i'm like oh this is super interesting and there was a lot of people interested in helium as well i think helium is more than it was more on the networking side not more on the crypto side um so it was kind of like the intersection of crypto and networking for me so like my domain and my what i'm interested in right now and again again like i i found the idea very interesting and i was already part of the community i was like oh this is like super cool let me kind of get my own see how it works so i was already part of the community and one other thing which i think was

very effective was in my projects when i was working with iot devices you know smart cities right smart cities everyone wants to make smart cities but they mostly say fail because you don't have the infrastructure to do that so i had directly seen like the problems you know the the the failed projects because you don't have the demand side there uh sorry the supply side there um so that was kind of like oh you know like this is both a crypto project network project i'm already part of the community um it was just something which i found super unique like a real life use case which i was already participating in um that it just made super like a lot of sense for me to kind of move you know

bring with uh bring with me the networking side of things and the crypto side of things as well when you say that you're part of the community was that a discord community as well or what's the how does because helium is this a dao is it a centralized company uh or what's the structure of this yeah for sure and that's actually a great question because i didn't mention that details but basically the helium community works is so there are today there are over 700 000 hotspot hotspots uh kind of providing coverage wow we just yeah we just crossed the 700 mark i think yesterday uh looking there's also three million in the back order so like it's growing exponentially

um so basically like hotspot owners i guess make up the community and um you know when you get this hotspot you provide coverage it's already over like thousands of cities hundreds of countries um and there's even full coverage in some cities like san francisco new york etc so um those hot spots basically power the network for iot devices to connect to so let's say you know you have like your scooters you can basically connect them to the helium network and then you will have how can i say like non like the connection will not stop when you leave your house because normally like you have a scooter you connect it to your home internet you leave your home internet gone right so this kind of provides global

permissionless and low-cost connection for all these iot devices um and yeah being part of the community was actually contributing like having the physical device and providing coverage so um getting that device and it's a very i think helium did a very good job on making it a very user friendly device it's a small device which looks like which is exactly like your wireless router you get it uh you connect it to your yeah you you kind of get the helium app and you connect it to your application and that's all the process from the end user side there's nothing you know extra you need to do you just get the device connected to your phone and there you go you're now part of the network you're part of the community um and helium is now the name helium is

like the name of the the network i guess we can say that it's like the network and the model uh the company which the core contributors were uh is now called um yeah nova so we just recently had uh a transition um and now we are where i'm working is the helium foundation and we are basically foundation armed to the helium network so there are different areas where we we support the network such as governance um ecosystem development technical oversight so that's kind of what we're doing as the helium foundation interesting that's amazing 700 000 by the way that's incredible uh it's super cool that is kind of like all over the world um yeah can you sort of talk about

so one of the interesting things with with web3 projects is tokenomics right or the the use case of tokens and so you mentioned um if you run a i don't know what you called it was it a minor or like if you run one of these yeah hot spots um you're getting paid in that is there other utility of that token like is this you said governance do holders of this token like are they able to like vote on something or what all like what is the purpose of that token other than just getting paid yeah um exactly so the governance is uh as i said like govern it's a community-owned project right so like they can't just like changes to the blockchain are made by a community vote um so like we use a process called

helium improvement proposal hip uh borrowed it from bitcoin bitcoins bips so we have a similar structure with the helium improvement proposals community members can make proposals and they are voted on by the community if passed the changes will be implemented so that's when obviously like that's the one most obvious utility i guess you can say for the token but i think another very important one is so to get devices up on the network so you have your scoocher you want to use that scooter for the helium network you pay with something called a data credit uh and then data credit is basically the only purpose of this data credit is um

to to use the network itself so it's kind of like airplane air miles right so you can buy those air miles on the plane and that's like the only purpose you can use the wireless over there so this kind of has a similar structure and to get data credits you need to burn hmt tokens and the important thing about data credits is that it's actually it's not tied to the h t price which gives a reliable price like reliable price for enterprises that want to use the network and the only purpose of the data credit is again to use the network so you basically burn agent t tokens get data credits and there you go like that's that's what you need to utilize the network

and helium is uh is its own blockchain correct you're not building on top of like ethereum or something you kind of you've made your own it's a layer one blockchain that's correct how long has it been around for actually that's a good question as well because helium didn't start out as a crypto project um so the main issue like the helium team started i think around 2014 i don't don't exactly sure but they started around that time and the goal was again to provide like a coverage for iot devices so like a global permissionless um network where all iot devices could connect to and the reason they started with that is because it's like the most underserved market in the telcom space you can't have like all

these there there was no solution to connecting like your scooter throughout the full city because like it would lose connection at some point and if you use like your your seller powered like your seller power it would either be too costly which doesn't make sense like have your scooter to like use like be that costly to use so there was really no solution for that and the team tried different ways to solve this problem first without crypto um but it was it didn't really work out in the beginning uh so i think they had like i find this story quite interesting but they had like the light bulb moment after reading the file coin white paper if i'm not mistaken um and that was when they said okay like let's

incorporate crypto to this project and actually give economic incentives for people to do this because it's obviously like too costly for one company to do it themselves and that's crypto superpower right you can give like you can create like an economic model like you can give people economic incentives to actually contribute so then they kind of pivoted they said okay like let's create like a blockchain at that time there was only ethereum and this is i think 2018. if i'm not mistaken 2018-ish 17-18-ish there was only ethereum at the time and they kind of like foresaw that it would be too costly to have this on ethereum even with those gas fees and those prices because this is um yeah this

obviously the cost structure is very important when you want people to pay and create the hotspots etc um so they decided to create their own layer one blockchain it's the helium blockchain um and yeah that's that's kind of like the story getting there which is quite interesting because it really shows as i mentioned right the you can coordinate economic activity with crypto and this is like a real application of that yeah i love that it's cool to see that like obviously this is a great idea right to have hot spots everywhere of course it's a great idea but it's interesting that it's not really that possible because there's no incentives to do it if you're not using cryptos it's really interesting to see like they actually needed crypto in order to make

this work you get a lot of people like why do you need a token why do you need a token especially bitcoin back to do this and it's like well there it is it's for incentives for people to actually like build or or run the infrastructure right um yeah that's really cool jay do you have any other questions on on helium or any of that yeah so just break it down for a listener let's say we have a listener who wants to do one of two things either wants to become a hot spotter what would what would they have to do with the steps and would there be any cost to them and then let's say we have a listener that wants to use the network what would they have to do how would they use the network yeah that's a that's a great point so

basically um i would definitely suggest to go to helium.com to find like all the information and all the links over there uh but for hotspot so if you want to be a hotspot host you and i can actually touch on this because we didn't mention before but the hardware to create this hotspot is actually open source so helium itself doesn't create like the hotspot it did in the start uh but now it doesn't create those hot spots but the manufacturers like their list of approved manufacturers and these approved manufacturers have um you know they create the hot spots basically and helium doesn't really you know there's no licensing fee or anything by that a lot of people assume that helium earns something from those hotspot sales but there's really nothing

on that end um so there's a list of approved manufacturers and you can go you can see you know which one's next to your city or your country and you can get a hotspot device from from the list of approved manufacturers on the website um and you know you get that device it comes to you you just need that heal your wallet application uh create your uh create your helium wallet and there you go you're now a participant in the network that's like all that's needed from the user end um obviously how much do the devices cost how much would it cost somebody to get a device i'm actually hesitant to give a price because it really varies i think we have like over 60 manufacturers right now um so it really

depends on the manufacturer yeah so there's like a really yeah there's a lot of options and now there's also the 5g rollout so you can also get like a 5g helium hotspot device as well so i'm kind of hesitant to give a price but there is a list of approved manufacturers which you can directly link to the website to find the device details um so yeah like that it's a very easy onboarding process to get it set up on your network on your home uh and there's actually like extra steps you can take so you can also like get an antenna to provide like wider coverage etc but um yeah like that's not like a necessary step that's like extra for maybe people who are for hobbyists in that area or like have

uh yeah have extra like interest to do that um and to use the network again you can also like it's it's on the lorawan network so you're you can get a lot around compatible device uh connect to the network you basically create an account on helium console um and then you kind of add your networks add your devices to the network and that's kind of your usage process again you can get a data cred you will directly have the access to get data credits over there um and yeah you can connect your devices and up and running and you can also find like um a lot of use cases on the website as well uh for example there are use cases ranging from um

yeah i think the gps tracker is the obvious one right you would like for logistics etc so like you want to have a packaged package tracker uh so that's like an obvious one then there's i think rat connected wrapped rat traps which is pretty interesting a wildfire wildfire use cases uh there's a lot of i think also connecting like scooters i'm in istanbul so like we have a lot of scooters going out around uh you know those that kind of directly strikes me as an obvious use case uh but they're like different options which you can also view over there um and yeah i think um so is it i would suggest mostly enterprise or businesses that are using the network or is there also just

like direct to customers that are using the network yeah so i think so it's always like first i think that the thing was to build a network so that people can use and then the use cases will arrive uh so because there was never like a global permissionless like low-cost network it was always hard to get those kind of use cases right now especially like we're talking about smart cities but what you need for that is you need like a you need connection to kind of connect all your um i don't know all your sensors in a city to to actually have like a smart city or like your bridges right when the bridge is open you need to have like that connection over there uh but because there was never such a such a supply of

this network uh i think we will still like keep on seeing more use cases kind of arise i'm always shocked by the use cases that come like even the rat traps is pretty interesting to me uh but i am super interested to see like more use cases come now that we actually have this network because the network both has been exponential so um now there is like the network to build iot devices and in fact just at this point like as the helium foundation we're really interested in seeing more iot use cases on the network so we we do have like a grants program and if any of the listener is also interested like please do feel free to reach out to me um more than happy to have a chat my dms are open so yeah like we're really looking

forward to seeing more use cases on the network and i think that that's like one of the most like that's the thing which i'm most exciting about right there's so much so much potential with this with this technology i want to transition out of the healing conversation for a second and go back to your your blog uh this is this is where i found you as well was your blog it seems it's become very popular uh it's a short period of time um but one of the topics that i think interests our listeners a lot is data because a lot of us are marketers or building businesses um in the space and data is very important then you wrote a a blog all on this subject and i'd like to pick your brain a little bit so um first can you just

talk about why data is so important web3 i know there's there's a big problem in the web 2 world this is sort of what you touched on your blog can you first sort of just talk about what that problem is um and then we can sort of transition into you know how web3 is enabling solutions for this problem yeah sure um so i i like the data topic a lot uh basically like in web 2 so you sign up like let's talk about twitter that's where we got connected so you have a twitter account your followers are actually twitters like they're not your followers um you know you kind of consent to giving twitter your profile picture your messages um so at some point you know if and you know if twitter says okay like

suddenly we're we're removing the follower feature so like all your followers i got right and then you're gonna be like okay like where did everyone go um so you can't you don't have those you don't have your data is not yours basically so like you give twitter all your information not just twitter but all the platforms right youtube um wherever you log the data is not actually yours uh and i found this topic so before i didn't really like obviously this was like a huge problem you know we we talk a lot about um you know facebook's scandals etc so that's like a huge problem uh but i think most people were like knew about it but it wasn't really something

to take action upon uh unfortunately because it was just easy to use it that's not a big enough pain point for most people i guess yeah it's like you know okay face because my profile pictures like so it was kind of like that but what really got my attention over there is when i was working as a i was really working more on the solution architecture side and i would spend like months plan like choosing the best database for the application or like trying to understand like which database to use and then all the apps would have their own data databases like for example i go do my shopping on amazon and then i go to buy a plane ticket on a different application so i have to give the same information again so it's actually a burden for the user to like

go to all these different applications and provide their you know uh data whatever and um yeah you know obviously people don't mind sharing their data but i would really like good user experience that's right i want to have a smooth experience to go so that i don't enter my data several times on these platforms and that's what i really saw was in web 3 because when you own your data like your identity is tied to your let's say your metamask wallet right so i go i sign in i carry my data with me to all these different applications so it basically gives me like composability um in the sense that i don't have to go and enter all these information on all these different platforms um which is really interesting

because it's it's really ties back to user experience right so it's it's not that it's bad like it's obviously not good that they take my data but when you see a direct benefits as the user i think that has a difference like because yeah like that's something to take action upon right like i don't have to go in and enter my address information to the 10 different sites i do online shopping from but i just entered once and it's all there and likewise for the application developers right they don't have to think about this extra data piece they use the same library to to kind of connect to the user's wallets and that's it right you can actually focus on giving more value rather than taking more data

so do you mean that for the applications for the builders and i'm not a developer so i don't really know this but they don't have to go and build the database side of it like you just said like amazon has to build their own database and google has to build their own database and so on and now you're saying to build an app the developers don't even need to worry about that saves them a bunch of time saves a bunch of money probably a bunch of complexity as well they don't even need to worry about that yeah exactly so this is kind of like in the process i know ceramic networks is definitely like a project which i'm super interested in uh but they're building the data layer of web3 so this is kind of like the block so the blockchain right ethereum is not

the most efficient for data storage because it's going to be high cost it's going to be like slow and it's just not made for like user data which you change as well uh but what ceramic is doing is they're building like a decentralized data network layer so the data is part of the users it's tied to your identity which you connect to the network with uh no one has there's no single owner of this data and you carry your data from application to applications so like when i simon just sign in to zoom over here i again you know connect to my data which is actually on ceramic it's again peer-to-peer distributed no one owns it it's really mine um and then i connect and then i go to like twitter sign in

with the same credentials again it's all mine and i can change it anytime i want um and yeah it's because the the web3 tech stack is kind of being built right now and i i think this data layer is very interesting and we're going to see more use cases i know there's one i think it's called orbis i follow them on twitter i had recently like discovered them but they're building like a decentralized twitter and they use ceramic for the data layer so basically like when you sign up to sign up to their platform um it's really you know you kind of your messages are actually yours so you have um yeah you can connect with your wallets there's really no central

power no central database owning your data but the data is on ceramic networks which is again a decentralized data network layer i'm interested to get your thoughts on i'd like to talk about the data side of things and data is obviously really important for advertisers most businesses like big tech businesses how they make their money um and a lot of other smaller businesses this is how they get their customers is by running ads right um so do you see that this completely disrupts it and ads go away or what i think happens is now that we own our data we can control which apps see or use certain parts of our data and we can probably charge for that data right we can put a price on it and say if you want to take my data you got to pay me x

amounts or whatever do you think that have you put any thought into that and like do you see that that's where it's going or what are your kind of assumptions here yeah that's a great that's a great point i so um i didn't like think a lot about that to be honest but now like thinking out loud the way i see it is what i really like about web3 is that um it's kind of like the net like you see a lot of networking effects like network effects you know like you use it i use it and oh it's mine so like i have extra incentive to use it because i feel like i own the platform which which you do like it's not like signing up to twitter and giving all that but when you use something in web3 it's like because you

have ownership you have like extra incentives which kind of like i tell you you tell them you know it kind of goes through the networking effects over there um but with owning data what i see like the direct effect is platforms now trying to give more value um so it's not going to be like which platform has like twitter right now it's hard to leave twitter because like everything is over there right you can't directly transition to another platform which provides the same value but if you own the data then you're going to choose the platform which provides the most value so you can directly say okay like all of us we're taking everything and we're going from twitter to orbis right and if orbis you know gives like an extra value layer

so i i see that as a direct effect um but yeah i don't know if that answers so by value do you mean by like paying out like incentive by getting paid or what do you mean by value so it could be like you know it could be by paying out like um i guess like more so kind of giving any like it could be you know maybe like random um random rewards like you mentioned like airdrops or rewards uh it could also be like providing better user experience um so whatever like i'm not tied to the platform which has the most people or the most you know which i'm most invested in but um i can just take all

this go to the platform like let's say they built another twitter which on the new twitter you can edit your tweets i don't know maybe they will do it on this twitter now as well uh but let's say they do that and i really want to edit my tweets then i can directly go and take my twitter for followings profile with me um right so yeah or or they fix the dm issue like i think dms on twitter like they're constantly lagging or like have some certain issue so you you're not tied to the platform like you can choose that that i think is the most is one of the biggest unlocks for web3 is just the ability where it's frictionless to move to another platform like right now everyone hates and i don't know why but everyone hates facebook because of the whole data

scandals and all that but everyone still uses it because you're like well what else are you gonna do right like you are you not gonna be on instagram right we all are uh and same with twitter everyone uses it and and you know i'm sure people would like to go elsewhere but it's very difficult you gotta create a new account you gotta try and bring all your followers over there you got to start creating content over there like it's very difficult to move to another platform web3 just makes it a complete open marketplace and it's like you just go where you're treated best essentially um and this is true for social platforms it's also true for like work right like dao's if you don't like where you're working you just hop onto another one and you can buy some tokens and get involved there um it'll be true i think

for the metaverse right if you don't like meta's metaverse go to another one right it's free and it's open it's frictionless so it's so easy um so yeah i think that's one of the biggest unlocks for web3 in my opinion and to that point right i think we usually lead with like decentralization which of course is yeah like i we're still like i consider myself not that early but i guess we're still early so like it's important yeah like decentralized but it's really a small group which kind of cares that it's decentralized but i think we should be leading with like the actual implications like the actual benefits to your point right um you have you can change it's up to you

you're kind of more in control um and that's why i'm really focused on like the narrative side right it's there's just so much things to do and um yeah like us degens we may like decentralization narrative but i don't know if everyone does right i don't know um yeah i don't think my neighbors do for example like i don't think users care about decentralization but i think the builders the people that are building care about decentralization at least that's that's my theory um i think that just add in one thing i think that what's really interesting about your narrative here is the narrative often is around the

security and the safety and the ownership of data but you're tying it into user experience which that everybody cares about right everybody wants a way better user experience and that is aside i don't hear that narrative as much as i hear the narrative of like oh well we should have a way that somebody doesn't own our data or can't de-platform us or doesn't have the control or can't have the high take rate that they have because we have more share like those narratives you hear a lot but the the way that composability leads to better user experience oh my gosh like that is everybody would want that and that's that's much more of a mass network effect

yeah yeah absolutely go for it if you haven't yet i was just gonna like amplify that like i um i'm not a lot of i'm not any kind of maxi i guess but if i were to choose one i would probably choose like user experience so i i think like we definitely need to focus more on um yeah like you know signing several metamask messages even calling it like a crypto wallet you know it's it's not actually like just a wallet right it's a lot more than that it's kind of like your entry to this to this world um but yeah i i think like the most the main issue is like again to the narrative like it should be more like what does it directly benefit me

right i don't see that in the narrative like until i kind of fell down and research for five months then i understood i'm also a user experience maxie i love that i love that term i someone tweeted that today and i retweeted i was like that's hilarious like i'm so in with that um so as we wrap up here i just have a couple questions for you that maybe you can help out the users with you you've been in this space for not very long i think you said you've been full-time in space for what two and a half maybe three months and i think you got in you know just last year not even a year i guess um but it seems like you have i mean you are already full time you're involved in some dows you bought some nfts you obviously really understand the

space as we can tell from this conversation like we have a lot of people that are joining our discord and then our listener star is going i want to get into web 3. i'm doing x and i want to learn more about web3 or i want to i want to start using web3 but they just they don't know how um so two things one how did you learn so much so fast and then and then two like for those who actually want to get involved and either want to start working or get a full-time job like what sort of recommendations or advice do you have for them to to get to get in um yeah for sure um i think i did all the possible mistakes so uh that was like my onboarding process right like especially when i

found out about nfts and then it's like i'm it's like 2 a.m on like a random thursday i see like a random tweet about this nft drop everyone's saying oh it's like the biggest thing i wake up i need to get this nft pay like unnecessary gas prices um so i kind of like did all the mistakes coming in and i guess i was just open and sharing them and i even like transferred the same nft from my same wallet to the same wallet for example like i was just not like you have to be responsible when you're doing this right i um and i was kind of open and sharing this just kind of trying to learn and um sharing all these like roadblocks i get

on the way um again i would suggest like to obviously be careful i i'm not like the best representation but what really worked out is i went on and used the products so just try them out right a lot of people make comments and they don't even know what metamask is so just you know get a wallet you don't have to buy anything you can just you know if you don't want to use ethereum you don't have to use ethereum you can get like a phantom solana wallet or whatever you really like um just get a wallet try and understand what you can do with it there's probably not a lot of crazy things you can do at this point i mean there is but you do need to like research a lot um and then go get yourself well this is not financial advice but you can maybe try and get an

nft or something like that so when i saw how that worked and that was like okay this is more important because a lot of people just listen to something don't go ahead and do it so i think like just to go ahead and do it um then you kind of understand and want to dig deeper like i don't know anyone who entered the space and is unhappy that they enter the space and i hear the same advice like actually use the products like actually do something like you really need to do something here which i think will change like in the web like traditional tech world you kind of are automatically directed to the path which you can go through but over here you have to be proactive so web3 rewards the viewers is something

i like to say and i mean this podcast this episode is called the doers for the web 3 doer spotlight right uh we're trying to remove as well but i mean it actually does reward yours because oftentimes if you're using or trying out these protocols and it's early stage you end up getting air drops and tokens so that's not even just learning you're you're probably gonna get paid if you do it um so that's one of the the beautiful things about web3 100 right like i think i missed out on all the airdrops but there's more to come probably so like you should really just try them out like give them a shot like don't just be like very negative like i was obviously in the start like i no no no no crypto uh but just try it out

and what i really like about this space is that it's very open and public and people are super helpful that's like the community side again as i mentioned right like i got i fell in love with the tech but the community really got me hooked everyone was super willing to help out i was that's like that's really when i kind of got more onto twitter i wasn't really on twitter before but um i just met a lot of amazing people seeing like all these smart people like interested in this tech like building something or like you know follow the smart people that's kind of like my thinking going in um but yeah like i i really like that it's very open and it's very public and like it's easy to engage with

communities but you have to do something you can't wait for someone to come and be like hey shall i tell you what you do right i think one of the interesting things as you say this just kind of made me think of this is like a lot of people are afraid because they don't want to screw up or they they think they don't know what they're doing and you know they're like oh there's so many other people that do know what they're doing so i don't want to get involved in a doubt or i don't want to because i'm afraid to and it's like we're all new no one is an expert in this space because it's like the stuff just started like we just started using nfts like i don't know a year and a half ago you know we we just started getting

involved in dallas like kind of the mainstream just recently so it's like if you're just getting it now and you're kind of afraid it's like listen we're all still figuring it out we all still make a ton of mistakes like no one knows what they're doing right now we're working on that i don't think there are any experts like no way if someone says they're an expert like don't trust them yeah exactly exactly all right so just as we wrap up here uh etta this has been amazing thank you so much for your time where can people find you online uh where's your blog give uh give a little minute for your own personal show here yeah sure i could give a shameless plug

here uh so i am as edda tweets on twitter edit tweets underscore and uh over there you'll also find a link to my blog i write on hashnote um i think it's edda.hashnow.dev um but my my twitter hat like my twitter page will tell you the the exact handle like i don't want to give a wrong one awesome we'll also put in the show notes below of course yeah for sure for sure uh and any any final thoughts to share anything you want to share before we finish up this is super thank you so much for having me i do hope that you know we get like more people in the space i'm super excited to get more um and yeah thank you so much for having me this was great

chat thank you and yeah just an absolute pleasure to hear your story and to hear about uh helium and all the projects you're working on and uh to meet a fellow user experience maxie that's uh that's exciting because i think we need more of that yes absolutely have a great day awesome thank you thank you very much thank you for listening to web3 academy we hope this helps you along your web 3 journey if it does please share this episode and subscribe so you don't miss the next one by the way if you have yet to join the discord community you are missing out this is where all the magic happens this is where we learn where we ask questions where we network uh you

want to be in there the link to join is in the description below and finally a quick disclaimer nothing in this podcast was financial advice crypto and web3 can be risky you can literally lose it all in fact if you invest on account of what we say you probably will lose it all so don't do that in all honesty the point of this podcast is to remove the noise of markets at price and focus on utility and implementation anyway so you should not take any of this as financial advice thank you friends and see you in the next one